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The guerrilla oil cartel

The control over the price of oil is in now in the hands of global guerrillas — the open source, system disrupting, transnational crime fueled, sons of global fragmentation. These actors can now, at will, curtail the supply of oil through low tech attacks on facilities in Iraq, Nigeria, central Asia, and India. The amount of oil effectively under their control exceeds five million barrels a day, more than Saudi Arabia’s two million barrels a day of swing production.

They explain how these low-tech, fast-moving attacks are difficult to stop as well as being quite effective. The guerillas don’t have to disrupt all the oil supply, just a bit here and there – then let the resultant price swings caused by capitalist pricing create the chaos for them. Indeed, they assume, these guerillas will soon join forces with shadowy hedge funds and the like, those who would profit hugely if they knew in advance an oil supply disruption was coming.
Nine killed in raid on Nigeria oil office

A rash of attacks and kidnappings in recent weeks by militia groups demanding the release from prison of local leaders has cut Nigeria’s daily oil exports of 2.5 million by nearly 10 percent.

NPR yesterday quoted a Nigerian OilCo official saying if the attacks didn’t stop, if they didn’t get serious help from the government, that they would abandon the fields.